Following Estonia's example, over half a million volunteers will clean up Ukraine, Greece, Baltics, Cyprus this weekend ({{commentsTotal}})

The Let's Do It! World Cleanup 2015 campaign is uniting five European countries in massive cleanup actions this weekend. The total of over half a million volunteers are expected to participate in the events.

On April 25, volunteers in Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania and part of Romania will clean their countries from illegal waste. People of Greece and Cyprus will do the same a day later.

Ukraine is getting ready for a cleanup event despite political instability and military conflict in some regions of the country. With the number of volunteers growing each year, Ukraine hopes to increase the participation from 170,000 last year to 250,000 this year, aiming for 5 percent of the total population.

"We are organizing a country-wide cleanup at such a difficult time because people would like to be engaged in activities that are not related to military action,” Yulia Markhel, head of Let’s Do It! Ukraine commented on the timing of the cleanup. “Our project brings people together at a time when they are separated."

"It’s very important to know that you’re not alone and there’s the whole country that supports and shares your goals and moreover, the whole world," Markhel added.

Both Latvia and Lithuania are aiming for at least 200,000 volunteers as well. The organizers there said that the amount of illegal trash collected by volunteers is decreasing every year. In Lithuania it has been reduced from 11,000 tons to 2,000 tons.

The international network of Let's Do It! aims to solve the illegal dumping problem on a local and global level both short and long term – by engaging a large part of the society in the cleanup activity on an action day, raising the issues related to illegal dumping and engaging both experts, political and local leaders to find more sustainable systemic solutions. The movement began in Estonia in 2008 when 50,000 people came together and cleaned up the entire country in five hours, removing 10,000 tonnes of waste. Today, Let’s Do It! is a global network of 112 countries, having so far engaged a total of 11.2 million participants.

Let's Do it! Estonia (Teeme Ära!) will take place the following weekend, on May 2, although it has evolved from a simple cleanup action to a more general community day. The weekend after that will see action around the Mediterranean coastline, in Malta, Turkey, Croatia and Italy.